Bridging the street here is a disused elevated
railroad that was used to transport freight along the Westside
waterfront, replacing the street-level tracks at 10th and 11th avenues
that earned those roads the nickname "Death Avenue." Built in 1929 at a
cost of $150 million (more than $2 billion in today's dollars), it
originally stretched from 35th Street to St. John's Park Terminal, now
the Holland Tunnel rotary. Partially torn down in 1960 and abandoned in
1980, it now stretches from Gansevoort almost to 34th--mostly running
mid-block, so built to avoid dominating an avenue with an elevated
platform. In its abandonment, the High Line became something of a
natural wonder, overgrown with weeds and even trees, accessible only to
those who risk trespassing on CSX Railroad property. Plans are underway
to turn it into a park, open to the public; it will be a tricky
balancing act to add safety and amenities without sacrificing the lost
ruin quality that makes it so cool.

The High Line was
built in the 1930s under an agreement between the New York Central Railroad,
New York State, and New York City, to elevate dangerous and congesting
railroad traffic above city streets.

The High Line was part of the larger solution, known as the West Side
Improvement Project, which was completed in 1934. The West Side Improvement
stretched for 13 miles, extending from Spuyten Duyvil at its northern edge
to Spring Street at the south. It eliminated 105 street crossings, added 32
acres to Riverside Park, and served as the "Life Line of New York," bringing
food and merchandise into the city.

The rise of trucking in the 1950s led to a drop in rail freight on the
High Line, and in the 1960s, the southernmost portion, between Bank and
Clarkson Streets, was torn down. The final freight train carried three
carloads of frozen turkeys down the High Line in 1980. In 1993, another
chunk of the viaduct, between Bank and Little West 12th Streets, was
demolished.

Prior to its
construction, Tenth Avenue was known as "Death Avenue" due to the high
number of accidents caused by the mix of rail traffic, other vehicles, and
pedestrians.

The High Line is an abandoned 1.45 mile (2.33 km) section of the former
elevated freight railroad of the West Side Line, along the lower west
side of New York City borough of Manhattan between 34th Street near the
Javits Convention Center and Gansevoort Street in the West Village. The
High Line was built in the early 1930s by the New York Central and has
been unused by freight service since 1980. It is in a state of
disrepair, although the elevated structure is basically sound. Wild
grass and plants grow along most of the route.

The community-based group Friends of the High Line[1] was established by
neighborhood residents Robert Hammond and Joshua David, leading to plans
to turn the High Line into an elevated park or greenway, similar to the
Promenade Plantée in Paris. In 2004, the New York City government
committed $50 million to establish the proposed park.

On June 13, 2005, the U.S. Federal Surface Transportation Board issued a
certificate of interim trail use, allowing the city to remove most of
the line from the national railway system. On April 10, 2006, Mayor
Michael Bloomberg presided over a groundbreaking ceremony, marking the
beginning of construction on the High Line project, turning it into an
elevated park. The project is being undertaken by landscape firm Field
Operations and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Hotel developer
Andre Balazs, owner of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, is building a
337-room hotel straddling the High Line at Little West 12th Street. As
of Spring 2007, most of the old rail tracks have been removed, making
way for the park.[2] If work goes as planned, the southern section of
the High Line, from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street will be open to the
public in Summer of 2008, creating a natural oasis in an urban city.
This southern section will include five access stairways and three
elevators. The park will eventually extend from Gansevoort Street north
to 30th Street where the elevated tracks turn west around the Hudson
Yards development project[3] to the Javits Convention Center on 34nd
Street. The northernmost section, from 30th to 34th Streets, is still
owned by the CSX railroad company.

Museum site
The Gansevoort Street terminus at the south end of the High Line was
considered for a new museum by the Dia Art Foundation, but has decided
against it. The Whitney Museum is now seriously considering the site as
an alternative to an addition it has been planning at its uptown
location.[4]

In literature
In Walking the High Line (ISBN 978-3882437263), photographer Joel
Sternfeld documented the dilapidated conditions and the natural flora of
the High Line between 2000 and 2001. The book also contains essays by
Adam Gopnik and John Stilgoe.

The High Line is discussed in Alan Weisman's The World Without Us (St.
Martin's Press, 2007) as an example of the unstoppably resilient power
of nature.

High Line reuse picks up steam

By Albert Amateau

Villager photos by Josh Rogers

On the High Line at the south
end of the Long Island Rail Road yard, looking east.

The conversion of the High Line into a
1.5-mile-long park between the Gansevoort Market and the Javits
Convention Center, derided as a romantic folly two years ago, appeared
last week to be a serious possibility, if not a sure thing.

At a Manhattan hearing of the federal Surface Transportation Board,
which has jurisdiction over the nation’s railroads, Deputy Mayor Dan
Doctoroff and City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden and others
testified that they foresaw the derelict rail viaduct being transformed
into a green spine linking three evolving neighborhoods.

The High Line is the key to the future of
the Gansevoort Market, the West Chelsea gallery district between 16th
and 30th Sts. and the proposed new residential and commercial rezoning
of the Hudson Yards district between 30th and 42nd Sts. west of Ninth
Ave., according to the testimony at the Thurs. July 24 S.T.B. hearing.

Even Chelsea Property Owners, a group of
property owners demanding demolition of the High Line since 1989,
acknowledged that it might drop its opposition to saving the 70-year-old
structure.

Doug Sarini, president of Chelsea Property
Owners, told the S.T.B. that the Bloomberg administration has been
suggesting to owners of property under the High Line that their
development rights could be transferred to other sites.

“If the city and the property owners can
reach an agreement, C.P.O. will withdraw its objections,” Sarini said.
“But until then, we intend to press for demolition,” he added. Sarini
explained later that the High Line has made it impossible for owners to
develop and realize the value of their property. The transfer or sale of
development rights to other sites might allow owners to realize their
properties’ value, Sarini said.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, head of City Planning
for Manhattan, said the proposal to transfer development rights to
neighboring sites would bring value to the surrounding area and allow
the High Line to have light and air.

Under previous administrations, the city
had sided with property owners who saw the rusting steel structure just
west of 10th Ave., last used for freight in 1980, as a blight on the
neighborhood. Indeed, in one of its last official acts in 2001, the
Giuliani administration signed an agreement joining the property owners’
move to demolish the High Line.

But Friends of the High Line, a group of
Chelsea residents, had begun promoting the preservation of the viaduct
under the federal Rails-to-Trails program, which provides for
recreational use of rails that could be restored to transportation uses
in the future. Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Burden were quick to see
the possibilities.

The Friends, founded by Joshua David and
Robert Hammond, found influential support in Phil Aarons, a principal in
Millennium Partners, a real estate development firm, who also testified
last week. The Friends have asked the S.T.B. to reconsider a 1992
decision that paved the way to demolition.

Members of the S.T.B. walked the
weed-covered structure a few hours before the July 24 hearing that was
convened to consider the Bloomberg administration’s application last
December for a certificate of interim trail use for the High Line.

“Back in 1989 city officials said the High
Line had to come down. What has changed in 14 years?” asked Roger Nober,
S.T.B. chairperson.

City Council Speaker Gifford Miller replied
that there was no imaginative vision for the future until recently. “The
example of the Promenade Plantée in Paris helped,” he added, referring
to an unused rail viaduct converted into a park in Paris.

However, he credited the Friends of the
High Line with changing the way many people view the structure. “I first
thought the idea was wacky, a park 18 feet above the street,” Miller
said, “But when I walked on it I could see it as one of the most
exciting proposals in the city.”

Doctoroff said the change in the city’s
position reflected the changes in the neighborhoods.

“Ten years ago there were almost no
galleries in West Chelsea and there was no activity to the north in the
Hudson Yards for years,” Doctoroff said. “To the south, the Meat Market
is rapidly changing and becoming a unique destination place,” Doctoroff
added.

The deputy mayor said that approval of the
certificate of interim trail use was the best and perhaps the only way
for the High Line to fulfill its potential.

Commissioner Burden recalled touring the
High Line a year ago. “It was a transformative experience,” she said. “I
could see it as a unique public experience, a 22-block elevated park
connecting neighborhood to neighborhood, providing a sense of place like
no place else,” she said.

Peter J. Shudtz, lawyer for CSX, the
railroad that owns the line, said the line needs a decision soon on
whether the city’s request for a certificate of interim trail use is
legal. An agreement dating from 1992 limits the railroad’s liability to
$7 million, but it was not signed by all the property owners. Friends of
the High Line entered the case claiming that the $7 million liability
cap did not cover environmental liability. Shudtz asked the S.T.B. to
rule on the environmental issue.

A State Supreme Court decision that
demolition of the High Line requires a full uniform land-use review
procedure, or ULURP, is still under appeal.Also testifying in favor of
converting the High Line were representatives of U.S. Rep. Jerrold
Nadler and City Councilmember Christine Quinn. John Lee Compton spoke in
favor of the High Line for Community Board 4. Jo Hamilton spoke for the
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which is calling
for designation of the Gansevoort Market Historic District.

The Gansevoort District under consideration
by the Landmarks Preservation Commission excludes three blocks from
Gansevoort to 14th Sts. between the High Line and West St. because of
uncertainty about the future of the rail viaduct.

The Municipal Art Society, American
Institute of Architects, the Society for Industrial Archeology, the New
York chapters of the American Planning Association and the American
Institute of Architects also urged preservation.

The S.T.B. chairman called on the city, the
Chelsea Property Owners and the railroads to submit written arguments in
the next 30 days on the question of whether the city is legally entitled
to a certificate of interim trail use.

The High Line was built in the 1930's as
part of the West Side Improvement project. The project also
included the construction of the Henry Hudson Parkway and the expansion
of Riverside Park. Tracks that once ran through Riverside Park as
a surface ROW were covered over, allowing for more parkland above the
ROW. A trenched railroad cut made up the ROW from 72nd Street to
34th Street. The elevated portion of the High Line ran from 34th
Street to Clarkson Street. Before the High Line was elevated,
freight trains ran along the surface streets of 10th and 11th Avenues.
Having trains running up and down surface streets was a dangerous
undertaking, and many accidents - both vehicular and pedestrian -
resulted in each street being referred to as "Death Avenue".
Like many New York City infrastructure projects at the time, Robert
Moses played an instrumental role in the construction and development of
the High Line and the West Side Improvement project.

A
map of the route of the New York Central High Line.

Map provided by Harry Hassler;
original map creator unknown.

Looking
north at the corner of Horatio Street and Washington Street, this
building was home of the former Manhattan Refrigerating Company.
The High Line right-of-way once went trough the building. One can
still see the outlines of where the ROW went in to the building.
Notice the gray brick with the three stripes going across it - that used
to be the south side opening for the ROW. One also see the large
brick pillars on the side of the building. One can judge by the
height of the pillars, from the Grocery store's green awning, to where
the top of the pillar meets the decorative facade, how large an area the
clearance of the ROW was inside of the building.

A
fence marks the end of the truncated High Line, which currently ends at
Gansevoort Street and Washington Street. In 1990, Conrail
sold the viaduct that ran from Gansevoort Street to Bank Street to the
Rockrose Development Company. The Rockrose Development Company
tore down the structure in this area.

It appears as if the demolition company cut
the structure at where the trestle for Washington Street and Gansevoort
Street once stood. A store resides below the viaduct.

This area is just south of the New York
City's infamous meat market. In fact, many of the High Line's old
railroad freight traffic consisted of deliveries to various meat market
warehouses along the ROW.

Walking
north along Washington Street, the viaduct runs adjacent to the street
in this area.

The New York Central railroad company operated the freight line for most
of the line's operational life. New York Central built the viaduct
in the 1930's. After the New York Central folded, Conrail took
over the High Line, and continued to run freight operations along the
line until 1980. CSX railroad, in a joint venture with Norfolk
Southern railroad, took over Conrail's operations and properties, and
jointly share control of the High Line viaduct. CSX is not
interested in keeping up with maintaining this rusting line, as
operational and maintenance costs are extremely high. Railroad
estimates tally these costs to up to $400,00 per year, with the majority
of the money being paid to property taxes. The line is not
officially listed as "abandoned", as the Surface Transportation Board
denied Conrail's request to abandon the line in 1992.

Elevated Visions
July 11, 2004

By JULIE V. IOVINE

Proposals for the High Line

THE High Line is an abandoned 1.5-mile stretch of overgrown railroad
viaduct that runs from the Meatpacking district to Hell's Kitchen — and
straight into the imaginations of a growing number of New Yorkers who
see it as proof that, even in an urban jungle, the forces of nature are
still at work.

The idea to turn the old freight route, once condemned to demolition, into
a public park has gained momentum over the past five years, culminating
in a design competition that attracted 52 entries. On July 16 the
proposals of four finalists will go on display at the Center for
Architecture on LaGuardia Place near Bleecker Street.

By most standards, the High Line possesses none of the qualities of a
park. An elevated rail line 30 to 60 feet wide and two stories above
street level, it was built in the 1930's to connect the Pennsylvania
Railroad Yards and the warehouses of Greenwich Village. By 1980, most of
the industries it had served were defunct, the trains were derailed, the
tracks went to seed and the myth began to sprout. It was fertilized by a
series of photographs taken in 2000 by Joel Sternfeld, showing off the
industrial ruin as a particularly contemporary landscape — the eerie
serenity of its black rails sweeping through a snowy strip of stubble in
the winter, bristling waves of grass poking out between its steel
trusses in the summer.

Last year, the Friends of the High Line, a group of artists, writers and
concerned neighbors, invited architects, designers and homegrown
visionaries to submit blue-sky ideas for the track's future. It
attracted 720 entries from 36 countries, including one proposal to turn
the entire length of the railroad bed into a swimming pool. After that,
a $15 million commitment from the City Council and a rezoning proposal
helped catapult the High Line's revival from long shot to a viable
scheme, and a more selective competition for a workable master plan was
undertaken.

The caliber of the finalists — from Steven Holl, a Manhattan architect who
had previously proposed a series of bridge-shaped houses straddling the
rails, to Zaha Hadid, the London-based architect who won the 2004
Pritzker Prize — reflects the seriousness of the project. Total
rebuilding, however, is not part of anyone's plan. "The park of the
future will be built on industrial sites like this one," said Robert
Hammond, a co-founder of the Friends of the High Line. "And we want to
show that a park doesn't have to be Central Park to succeed. It can be a
thin linear space cutting next to buildings." The winning team will be
announced in August, at which point its design will be subject to
revision.

The Friends of the High Line and city representatives who will be judging
the competition expect contestants to give the High Line a new life and
purpose while still respecting its serendipitous character as a streak
of wilderness in the city.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

----------------

HIGH LINE: SKY'S LIMIT

By TOM TOPOUSIS
July 15, 2004

New Yorkers will get their first glimpse today of dramatic proposals to
convert a long-unused railroad trestle on Manhattan's West Side into a
spectacular park in the sky, including calls for high-flying pools,
wetlands and nature trails.

Four design teams have submitted their proposals in hopes of winning the
prestigious job of transforming the High Line into a 1.5-mile public
space that stretches from the Meatpacking District through the art
galleries of Chelsea.

"They've met our expectations and exceeded them," said Joshua David, a
co-founder with Robert Hammond of the group Friends of the High Line,
which is coordinating the project with the city's Planning Department.

The Post obtained an exclusive look at the designs, which range from a
modernistic overhaul of the viaduct into a series of outdoor art
projects on one end of the spectrum, to rustic paths through fields of
grasses and wild flowers on the other.

Beginning tomorrow, the proposals will be on public display at the
American Institute of Architecture's gallery at 536 La Guardia Place in
Greenwich Village. A finalist will be chosen in August and a master plan
for the project is expected by next spring.

The High Line, once slated for demolition and now strictly off limits to
the public, is on track to be fully opened by 2006, with some sections
made accessible earlier as work on the viaduct goes along. The project
will cost about $65 million.

The design teams are:

* Field Operations with Diller, Scofidio and Renfro:

James Corner, founder of Field Operations, envisions a "fantastic, mixed
perennial landscape" punctuated by "event spaces" that would include a
clear-bottomed pool and a grandstand rising off the trestle.

* Steven Holl Architects:

Steven Holl calls the High Line "a suspended valley, a green strip"
running through Chelsea. His plan includes a landscaped tower at the
north end. "It's a piece of Zen poetry and I insist that it shouldn't be
over-programmed."

*TerraGram/Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates:

Team leader Michael Van Valkenburgh said the design will be "a celebration
of the natural phenomenon" already taking root on the train trestle and
will include plantings of mustard seed and sunflowers that eliminate
toxins in the soil.

* Zaha Hadid Architects:

Markus Dochantschi, who coordinated the team, described the High Line as a
rare horizontal setting in a vertical city. "Our theme is movement and
the dynamic of movement," he said of the plan that would include
rotating public art shows.

Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc.

--------------------

High Line forum packed tighter than a subway car

By Albert Amateau

Over 500 people attended a forum on the future of the High Line elevated
railroad at the Center for Architecture on LaGuardia Pl. last week.

If the overflow crowd at the Center for Architecture’s forum on the High
Line last week is any indication, future visitors to the elevated park
between the Gansevoort Market and the Javits Convention Center will
barely fit on the 30-ft. width of the old rail viaduct.

“Since we opened last fall, this is the largest crowd we’ve had here,”
said Rick Bell, executive director of the New York Chapter of the
American Institute of Architects, referring to the 500 people who
crammed into the Center at 536 LaGuardia Pl. for the July 15
presentation on the future of the High Line. Others who tried to get in
could not, and were left standing outside on the sidewalk.

The focus of all that attention was the four teams that submitted
scenarios to convert the disused 1.3-mile railroad viaduct into an
elevated park that traverses Chelsea along the west side of 10th Ave. —
where more than 200 art galleries occupy old warehouse space — and the
Meat Market in Greenwich Village.

Team leaders used words like “magical,” “unruly” and “wild,” to describe
aspects of the elevated railroad that they intend to honor and enhance
but inevitably change by transforming it into a public park. And to one
degree or another, all four teams are committed to providing public
access to the High Line as soon as possible, even if that access is only
temporary at first.

Steven Holl, an architect and leader of one of the teams whose office
overlooks the High Line at 31st St., recalled seeing a blue butterfly on
the viaduct during a recent visit. Looking ahead to 2050 to “a suspended
valley” among the tall buildings of the future, he said, “As long as we
can see a butterfly, we will have achieved that balance we’re seeking.”

Built by the now-defunct New York Central Railroad 70 years ago to raise
street-level freight trains from the surface of 10th Ave. — where they
were an impediment to traffic and a menace to pedestrians — to tracks 20
ft. overhead, the High Line has been unused for 20 years and is
overgrown by the seeds of windblown grasses, weeds and trees.

Friends of the High Line, organized by Chelsea residents Joshua David and
Robert Hammond in 1999, began working for what was then considered the
romantic folly of preserving the line that had originally served West
Side factories and warehouses. But the Bloomberg administration adopted
the idea and has made a public promenade on the High Line the central
element in the proposed redevelopment of West Chelsea, the planned
construction of the controversial New York Sports and Convention Center
and the redevelopment of the Hudson Yards.

“We begin with the strange, otherworldliness of the High Line and the
emergent growth over time as new space is built. But as soon as it
becomes a public space, it can no longer be like this,” said James
Corner, landscape designer and leader of the Field Operations team.

The Field Operations vision has an interaction of hard and soft surfaces,
including dips into pools in some places with the path flying above the
track bed in areas that are to remain untrodden.

Elizabeth Diller, an architect member of the Field Operations team,
suggested sections for events that could accommodate as many as 200
people. At places where the High Line goes through buildings, like the
Chelsea Market, the former National Biscuit Company building between
15th and 16th Sts., there could be commercial uses to generate income to
maintain the High Line.

“The extraordinary thing about this project is its improbability and the
constant transformation of space that will never be completed,” Corner
said.

Holl also paid tribute to the open-ended transformation of the High Line
and the space beneath. “The High Line has been evolving for 70 years and
we hope to make it a part of the city — not headed to a fixed end,” he
said.

The structure was built to handle freight trains and is four times
stronger than it must be for a pedestrian promenade, Holl said. He
envisioned the structure without its concrete skin and some steel
removed to create a lattice, allowing light to penetrate to the street
below. Colored lighting provided by LEDs on the underside of the viaduct
would promote attendance at the art galleries that have come to dominate
the West Chelsea district.

Michael Van Valkenburgh, landscape designer and leader of the TerraGRAM
team, invoked the name of Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central
Park in the 19th century.

“We’re bringing the High Line into the 21st century, taking its glaring
limitations and making it the Central Park of this century,” Van
Valkenburgh said. The High Line will be a transition between “the dog
and the wolf,” he said — the dog being the built environment underneath
and around the viaduct and the wolf being the wild growth on top.

Van Valkenburgh’s vision includes zoned gardens with the neighbors of
different stretches taking part in the creation and maintenance of the
High Line flora. He also suggested stripping some of the viaduct to let
people see the fundamental structure of New York City. “In time, we hope
to have stairs at every intersection emerging into a miniature forest of
trees,” Van Valkenburgh said, adding, “But it’s important to keep the
rails visible at all times. We can’t lose the idea of a real railroad.”

Zaha Hadid, winner of the 2004 Pritzker Prize for architecture and the
first woman so honored, is the leader of another team that sees the High
Line as “a ribbon which can expand or shrink as needed.” The Hadid team,
which includes The Kitchen, a West Chelsea arts venue, as cultural
advisor, sees art installations and programs as an important element of
the High Line. “We hope to engage the streets as part of the effect of
the High Line,” Hadid added.

All the teams have consultants for dealing with any toxic residue of
nearly 50 years of rail use. “CSX [the company that inherited the High
Line from Conrail, which took it over when New York Central collapsed]
will be very nervous if we keep talking about toxicity, but in fact,
there’s very little there,” said Van Valkenburgh.

The federal Surface Transportation Board must approve the application by
the city and the Friends of the High Line to include the viaduct in the
federal rail-banking system’s Rails-to-Trails program. That approval is
likely since opposition by Chelsea Property Owners, whose property is
under the viaduct, has evaporated after the city’s promise to allow them
to sell their development rights to developers of properties elsewhere
in a proposed West Chelsea special district.

During the past 30 years, residential developers of property under the
High Line between the St. John’s Building — a former rail terminal for
the High Line — north of Canal St. and Gansevoort St. were able to
convince the federal government to approve demolition of the southern
stretch of the viaduct.

Friends of the High Line and the city hope to select a development team
from among the four submissions by September. The winning team will
develop a master plan in a process that will include frequent public
meetings, and construction is to being early in 2006.

“We don’t know what the cost might be until we have a master plan, but
we’re estimating it to be between $65 million and $100 million,” Hammond
said. The city has so far committed $16 million and Congressmember
Jerrold Nadler has secured $5 million in federal funds. “We hope
Senators Schumer and Clinton will secure more federal funds and we hope
to raise private funds,” Hammond said, adding, “We think we’ll have
enough money to start construction.”

Senator Clinton is a strong supporter of the project.

“The High Line project represents the extraordinary things that can be
accomplished when a community organizes and decides it wants to move an
idea forward,” Clinton recently said in a statement to The Villager.
“That’s why I’ve been an ardent supporter of this project, because I
believe it will help create a unique and scenic landmark on Manhattan’s
West Side that will be treasured for generations.”

The Villager, Volume 74, Number 12 | July 21 - 27, 2004

---------------------

Remaking Tracks

Four plans would transform the High Line, an overgrown vestige of the
city's industrial past, into a vibrant swath of its future

BY JUSTIN DAVIDSON
STAFF WRITER

July 29, 2004

A strip of forgotten wilderness runs down the West Side of Manhattan like
a weedy seam. The High Line, an abandoned elevated railway that snakes
its way from West 34th Street to the Gansevoort Meat Market, is a
rusting relic of the industrial age. Built in the 1930s to carry freight
in and out Manhattan's manufacturing district, it was eventually
condemned to obsolescence by the combined forces of gentrification and
trucking.

It has become a pastoral avenue that nobody sees. In the 24 years since
the last load of frozen turkeys was delivered by train to a Greenwich
Village warehouse, weeds and wildflowers have sprung from its gravel
beds, obscuring the tracks and suggesting a possible future as a verdant
walkway above the streets. Some local businesses see it as an obsolete
eyesore, shutting light out from the sidewalks and depressing property
values. But the Bloomberg administration and a small army of celebrities
have sided with Friends of the High Line, an organization that wants to
transform the dilapidated structure into a destination.

Last year, that nonprofit group solicited ideas about how to accomplish
that. It received 720 suggestions, from the minimal (leave the weeds) to
the preposterously extravagant (a mile-and-a-half-long swimming pool).
Now the organization is conducting a more realistic competition for a
master plan and has narrowed the field to four teams of architects.

The romance of the project has attracted major talent. Zaha Hadid, this
year's Pritzker Prize winner, leads one team. Another includes Diller,
Scofidio + Renfro, which has been hired to refurbish Lincoln Center. A
third is captained by the esteemed architect Steven Holl and the fourth,
called Terragram, is led by the landscape architect and Harvard
University professor Michael Van Valkenburgh.

So far the process has produced only general design approaches. An exhibit
of the four proposals is on view at the Center for Architecture until
Aug. 14. Whichever team gets the job in the fall will then plunge into a
new round of studies, debates and brainstorming sessions, emerging with
a full-fledged master plan next year.

In the meantime, New Yorkers can look forward to a new kind of urban park,
a distinctly local equivalent to the European passeggiata. The
pedestrian boulevard will thread its placid way through a neighborhood's
shuddering changes. In the past 20 years, the westernmost slice of
Chelsea, between 10th Avenue and the Hudson River, has metamorphosed
from a gritty industrial district to an area sprinkled with art
galleries and chichi restaurants.

The Bloomberg administration is trying to shape the next phase of that
transformation by applying a nudge here and a brake there. Last fall,
the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Gansevoort
Meat Market area as a historic district, protecting its cobbled streets
and its warehouses, with their corrugated-metal awnings, from
demolition.

At the same time, the city planning commission unveiled a proposed
rezoning of West Chelsea, which would allow a flock of new apartment
buildings. Meanwhile, the city is negotiating the tension between change
and preservation by cheering on the renovation of the High Line.

Its future as a park is far from a sure thing. Money must be raised -
somewhere between $60 million and $100 million - and the federal
government must be persuaded to fold the project into the
rails-to-trails program through which disused railroad tracks can be
converted into parks and bicycle paths until they are needed as train
routes again (in most cases, never).

Each of the four finalist proposals for the High Line would create an
immeasurable improvement in the life of Manhattan. The tragic mistake
would be to demolish the High Line or let it continue to decay.

Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Diller, Scofidio + Renfro teamed up with James Corner and his landscape
firm, Field Operations, to create the most provocative and vivid of the
four proposals: an undulating platform that would preserve some of the
railway's current sense of wilderness.

For now, the tracks run through an uncultivated grassland. The proposal
would pave the structure with long concrete planks, sometimes tightly
fitted, sometimes separated by gaps overflowing with vegetation. Meadow
would shade into strips of brush and woodland thicket, fading, perhaps,
into patches of artificial marsh.

Like a combination of boardwalk and dune, concrete ramps would arc above
the trees, providing lofty views, or swoop down between the steel
girders, cocooning pedestrians in greenery and allowing them to forget
for a moment the city all around. The up-and-down intentionally slows
the typical New York City quick-march to a contemplative stroll. Those
in a hurry need only click down the stairs to the churning sidewalks.

In all the proposals, the High Line becomes a place of spectacle, too.
This team's more fanciful renderings envision high-flying acrobatic
demonstrations and a stretch of elevated beach, complete with swimming
hole. But Field Operations also foresees havens for more easily
conceivable activities: outdoor movies, people-watching and light shows
illuminating the line's several passageways through existing buildings.

At the southern end, sculpted nature gives way to raw industrial artifact.
Naked steel beams extend over a long, grand staircase by the Gansevoort
Meat Market, where a glass wall turns butchering into a spectator sport.
Perched above it all is a cantilevered glass gallery like the top of a
"T," a transparent box whose principal purpose is to let people see and
be seen.

Zaha Hadid

The core challenge of the High Line will be to make attractive the idea of
lifting street life into the air. Hadid, the celebrated Iraqi-born
architect based in London, draws pedestrians through vertical space like
salmon upriver, in an instinctual flow of desire. In her Rosenthal
Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, for instance, she merges
floor, wall and walkway to give the museum the feeling of a continuous,
ribboning structure.

Her proposal for a High Line master plan has some similarities with that
of Field Operations: zones of vegetation that bleed into each other
without formal borders, and a surface that rolls above and below the
horizontal plane defined by the railway girders.

But Hadid envisions a more liquid structure, an architectural stream fed
by the tributaries of building, park and street. At 18th Street, people
would enter her version of the High Line by ambling up a looping,
meadowed, handicapped-accessible ramp that doubles as the roof of a
tubular building. The hurried and able-bodied could climb a standard set
of stairs, but the gestural drama of the landscape emphasizes the ramp.

In the end, Hadid's team may leave blanks at various access points for
other architects to design. But in the conceptual renderings, which are
a good deal more specific and legible than Hadid's usual elegant
abstractions, the High Line has acquired a seamless, molded-concrete
curviness reminiscent of a 1960s flight terminal.

Markus Donchantschi, one of Hadid's collaborators, suggested that benches
might emerge out of a ramp, become articulated (identifiably benchlike)
for a few yards, and then disappear again back into a floor or wall. At
the Gansevoort Market, the walkway would slope gently up and end on a
rooftop observation deck, giving the building below the cozy, space-age
look of the Teletubbies' burrow.

Steven Holl

The architect Steven Holl, who lives in Greenwich Village near the
southern end of the High Line and works near the other end, has been
floating plans to salvage it for more than 20 years. His priority now is
to get at least a segment of it open to the public soon, so that
redeveloping the rest will seem irresistible. Eventually, he hopes to
make the High Line part of a green loop connected to the new Hudson
River Park by a series of pedestrian bridges that would soar above the
fierce traffic of West Street.

Holl also hopes to move the West 26th Street flower market down to the
meat market, so the smell of blooms rather than blood would fill the
wide intersection at Gansevoort Street. A spiraling ramp full of flower
stalls would rise above the warehouse building, like a scented lookout
turret.

The actual lookouts - the security officers monitoring the High Line's
full length - would be headquartered in a long glass gallery jacked
overhead at 18th Street: a "translucent membrane bridge," Holl calls
it.

Holl has paid special attention to the rail line's underside, partnering
with the artist Solange Fabião to create a 1.5-mile lighting display
that could be used for artwork or advertising.

Terragram

Of all the finalists, it is the Terragram team, led by the landscape
architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, that draws the greatest inspiration
from the way the High Line looks today: a strip of urban wilderness. In
this plan, still painted in broad philosophical brushstrokes rather than
architectural details, a narrow concrete walkway meanders past patches
of unkempt-looking greenery or a thick forest of sunflowers. The High
Line has a particular ravaged beauty, heightened by neglect: Above,
according to the team statement, is a "resilient volunteer wildscape,"
below, the "sublime industrial underbelly of the rail corridor itself."

All the architects evince an almost sensual fondness for the High Line's
bare steel, the rare frank manifestation of a skeleton that, in tall
buildings, is usually hidden. In projects of adaptive reuse such as this
one, there is always a balance to be struck between preserving an
architectural memory and giving it new life; Terragram's plan celebrates
messy history rather than a high-gloss future.

That's the crux of the competition. Assuming that in the long run the
Friends of the High Line are successful in their quest, the final
selection of a master planner will determine just how raw and brutal an
old industrial muscle is permitted to remain or how smooth and civilized
it will become as it runs through the heart of an ever-more-chic
Chelsea.

A rendering of the proposed design for the High Line looking south from
22nd Street and 10th Avenue.

A rendering of the proposed design for the High Line shows the view at
23rd Street and 10th Avenue.

A team of New York-based architects led by Field Operations and Diller,
Scofidio & Renfro has been selected to design a master plan that would
transform an abandoned section of elevated freight track into a public
park that would weave its way north from the meatpacking district to
Hell's Kitchen, two stories above the city.

The city and Friends of the High Line, a nonprofit group that has been
overseeing the development of the High Line elevated track, have yet to
officially announce the selection, which was made last week. City
officials and members of the architectural team still have to work out
the details of a design contract that could eventually encompass a
series of public gardens, a swimming pool, an outdoor theater and food
halls, a project running for more than 20 city blocks from Gansevoort
Street to West 34th Street.

Nonetheless, the selection marks a critical step in one of the most
compelling urban planning initiatives in the city's recent history. The
preliminary design succeeds in preserving the High Line's tough
industrial character without sentimentalizing it. Instead, it creates a
seamless blend of new and old, one rooted in the themes of decay and
renewal that have long captivated the imagination of urban thinkers.

Perhaps more important, the design confirms that even in a real estate
climate dominated by big development teams and celebrity architects,
thoughtful, creative planning ideas - initiated at the grass-roots level
- can lead to startlingly original results. As the process continues,
the issue will be whether the project's advocates can maintain such
standards in the face of increasing commercial pressures.

Architects have fantasized about the High Line since at least the early
1980's, when Steven Holl first completed a theoretical proposal to build
a "bridge of houses" that straddled the elevated tracks. Property owners
considered the line an urban blight, and only a few years ago they were
lobbying for its demolition. Friends of the High Line defeated that
effort, in part by convincing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and city
planning officials that a revamped High Line could act as a spur to
urban renewal. Eventually, the site was conceived as a public promenade,
one that could be used to bind together the communities that lie beneath
it.

The city planning office, meanwhile, devised a plan that would allow
property owners below the High Line to transfer their development rights
to other sites within the district. Friends of the High Line has also
raised $3.5 million in private money for the project. The city has
committed another $15.75 million over the next four years.

The strength of the Field Operations design is its ability to reflect a
sense of communal mission without wiping away the site's historical
character. These competing interests are balanced with exquisite
delicacy.

The architects begin by creating a system of concrete planks that taper
slightly at either end. The planks will be laid out along the High
Line's deck in parallel bands, creating a pedestrian walkway that
meanders back and forth as it traces the path of the elevated tracks,
occasionally fading away to make room for a series of colorful gardens.

The gardens embody competing forces - some wild, others carefully
cultivated. At various points along the deck, for example, the existing
landscape of meadow grass, wildflowers, weeds and gravel will be
preserved. At other points, that landscape will be replaced by an
explosion of vividly colored fields and birch trees.

The idea is to create a virtually seamless flow between past and future
realities, a blend of urban grit and cosmopolitan sophistication. But it
is also to slow the process of change, to focus the eye on the colliding
forces - both natural and man-made - that give cities their particular
beauty. That vision has a more subversive, social dimension: to offer a
more measured alternative to the often brutal pace of gentrification.

There are few better vantage points for observing the city's evolution
than the High Line. From the gardens, for example, various views would
open up to the surrounding cityscape. Framed by the surrounding
buildings, they would offer visual relief from the isolated world above.
At the same time, they would set up a rhythm as one strolls along the
concrete deck, between spectacular urban vistas and the more
contemplative world of the gardens.

The tranquility of that experience would be interrupted by a series of
carefully calibrated public events. In some places, for example, the
concrete path is to dip below the level of the gardens, allowing
pedestrians to observe street life below. Above 23rd Street, another
section of the deck would peel up to create an informal outdoor
amphitheater. Just beyond the stage, a section of the deck would be cut
away, creating a stunning view of cars streaming by below. The opening
is to be framed by a perfectly manicured lawn - a nod, perhaps, to the
more conventionally suburban vision of park planning that extends a few
blocks away along the Hudson River.

Further to the north, a public swimming pool would be embedded into the
deck's concrete surface. Like much of the design, the pool is only a
sketch - the beginning of an idea - but it is an intriguing one
nonetheless. A large concrete panel lifts up at one end of the pool to
support a faux urban beach. Concrete piers extend out into the water
like giant fingers.

The power of such gestures lies in their simplicity. As architectural
objects, they are relatively mundane. Their meaning arises from their
relationship to the immediate context.

The design's greatest weakness, in fact, occurs when the architecture gets
more elaborate. Currently, the High Line ends abruptly at Gansevoort
Street, its steel beams and concrete deck protruding above the roof of a
warehouse like a severed limb. This would eventually become one of the
project's main gateways. The architects have proposed a grand stair that
leads up to the gardens, flanked by a gallery space and rooftop market.
Just above the market, the large, glass-enclosed form of a bar would jut
out over the stair.

The idea is to tap into the meatpacking district's vibrant social life in
order to energize the High Line's public gardens. But the architecture
is bland. And the impulse is at odds with the lightness of touch that
characterizes the rest of the design. Worse, it comes perilously close
to conventional development formulas: a high-end mall for downtown
sophisticates. What one longs for here is a more gentle entry, one that
would allow the public to slip into the gardens virtually unnoticed.

Such issues can easily be corrected as the design process unfolds. But
they point to what may ultimately be the greatest threat to the
project's success: regulating access to the site. The High Line has
already begun to spark the interest of developers, who understand its
potential as an agent for raising real estate values. The developer
Marshall Rose is working with Frank Gehry on a proposal for a mixed-use
development that would straddle the High Line near 18th Street. The
hotelier André Balazs, meanwhile, is negotiating to purchase a site that
adjoins the High Line just below 13th Street, a lot that was once slated
for a project by the celebrated French architect Jean Nouvel.

In an effort to take advantage of that interest, city planners have
envisioned a series of incentives that would reward developers who
include public access to the High Line in their plans. The scheme would
also allow developers to connect commercial ventures directly to the
gardens, which could radically alter the nature of the project. At the
same time, allowing those who own properties below the High Line to
relocate creates the possibility of freeing portions of the High Line
from the surrounding density.

In their competition entry, the Field Operations architects' only link to
outside development is depicted as a drawbridge. They are right to be
ambivalent. As the High Line project continues to develop, the issue of
access will have to be handled with particular care. If not, the High
Line could one day become nothing more than Manhattan's belated answer
to the historic theme park - a grotesque urban mall on stilts.

But this is not the time for skepticism. So far, both Friends of the High
Line and the City Planning Department have proved remarkably adept at
negotiatingpolitical hurdles. They have refused to pander to commercial
interests. Nor have they ignored them. In selecting the design, they
continue to show a genuine sensitivity to the High Line's value to the
public realm. After the flawed, often cynical planning efforts that have
marked development at ground zero, the thoughtful development of the
High Line should be welcomed by New Yorkers who believe decent planning
and imaginative architecture have a role in the city's future.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

--------------------

The High Line — a dramatic park?

BY JUSTIN DAVIDSON
Staff Writer

August 13, 2004

If the budgets and bureaucrats fall into place, the architectural firm
Diller, Scofidio + Renfro will transform the High Line, an abandoned
railway running above the streets of West Chelsea, into a dramatic strip
of parkland.

Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit organization leading the effort to
recycle that industrial artifact, chose the firm from four finalists
including the Pritzker Prize-winner Zaha Hadid, sentimental favorite
Steven Holl (who has been agitating for the project for more than 20
years), and a team led by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.

Diller, Scofidio + Renfro's plan offers an irresistible mix of the
pastoral and the theatrical. All the proposals dealt with the untamed
grassland on the abandoned railway bed, but the winner envisioned an
undulating landscape that climbs small hills and dips between the
girders.

The choice cements the recently exalted reputation of a firm that once
inhabited the conceptual edge of the architectural world, working as
much with insubstantial materials such as light and electronics as with
concrete and steel. The firm has recently scooped up commissions to
reshape Lincoln Center and the cultural district around the Brooklyn
Academy of Music.

Even half a dozen years ago, it seemed implausible that the firm would
become such a major player in reshaping the cultural life of an
architecturally cautious city. This was, after all, the team that in
2002 produced the Blur Building, a temporary walk-in cloud hovering
above a Swiss lake. Among the projects the firm has in the pipeline is
the Eyebeam Museum of Technology in Chelsea, where visitors will wander
along a ribboning ramp in a wireless high-tech haze and floors will
swoop up into walls as they do in a skateboarding park.

The firm's High Line design combines the provocative with the practical.
An elevated outdoor swimming hole includes a patch of beach on a sloping
plinth. A vast outdoor movie screen would be visible from the street —
and from bedrooms three blocks away. But the core of the proposal, which
is still in the early phase, involves blurring the lines between
pavement and wilderness, with plants that burst from between narrow
concrete planks. Rather than the neatly divided zones of traditional
parks, the scheme aims for a stylish bit of planned dishevelment.

There are still major hurdles. The project could cost up to $100 million,
which has not yet been raised, and while the city backs the plan, the
federal government and CSX, the company that owns the High Line, still
need to sign off on it.

In one of his last acts in office, Mayor Rudy Giuliani approved the
demolition of the High Line, an abandoned elevated freight railroad
running through Chelsea and the West Village. The owners of property
shadowed by the hulking structure wanted it torn down. The idea of
reinventing the tracks as a public open space, proposed by a grassroots
group called Friends of the High Line, was a fantasy that few people
gave any chance of success.

Fast forward three years. This October, the city announced the selection
of a design team to make the track a public promenade, as well as the
dedication of $43 million to the project, which has an estimated total
cost of between $60 and $100 million. The State of New York and CSX
Transportation, the railroad that owns the line, joined the city in
petitioning the federal Surface Transportation Board to rail-bank the
line, which would transfer the easement to the city and allow its use as
public space. If all goes as planned, construction will begin next fall.
Against all odds, a crazy and impractical-seeming idea is rapidly
becoming a reality.

The High Line was built in the 1930s to serve the refrigerated meat and
dairy warehouses of the West Side, taking dangerous freight traffic off
Tenth Avenue. Part of the line was torn down in the 1960s, and the
remaining segment, from Gansevoort to 34th Street, was taken out of
service in 1980. It was mostly forgotten, except by architects,
preservationists and adjacent property owners.

The few people who discovered the rusting track, overtaken by weeds and
wildflowers, were captivated by its solitude and mystery. Some likened
it to a magic carpet ride -- a tapestry that changed with the seasons,
floating two stories high through industrial precincts, just above the
streets but open to the sky and river and cityscape.

In 1999, West Side residents Joshua David and Robert Hammond founded
Friends of the High Line to save the line and take advantage of a rare
opportunity to create open space in an area that desperately needed it.
To their surprise, they quickly gained the support of local residents,
civic organizations, and businesspeople, including the owners of art
galleries in West Chelsea. "The power behind the project was that it was
a dream, a dream-like vision, we were making a reality," recalled David.
"It seemed like something wonderful and impossible. And as soon as
people got the sense that this wonderful, seemingly impossible thing was
possible, it created incredible excitement."

Elected officials started coming on board, including City Councilmember
Christine Quinn, who represents the area, and Council Speaker Gifford
Miller. A turning point came with the election of Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, who quickly reversed the city’s course and began the
rail-banking process early in his term.

Mayor Bloomberg and Department of City Planning Director Amanda Burden
envision the line tying together three areas that are the focus of city
revitalization efforts: the Gansevoort Historic District, West Chelsea,
and the far West Side between the 30s and 42nd Street, including the
site of the controversial proposed stadium complex. Mayor Bloomberg
called the High Line "a beautiful new amenity that will serve as the
spine of vibrant new neighborhoods on Manhattan’s Far West Side and
create new economic benefits in the years to come."

A Completely Different Kind Of Park

In making their case to preserve the tracks, Friends of the High Line
frequently cited the example of the Promenade Plantée, a landscaped
walkway on a rail viaduct crossing the 12th Arrondissement in Paris.
Reflecting the classic beauty of the city it overlooks, the promenade is
a linear formal garden, a path bordered and interrupted by neatly edged
beds of flowers, shrubs, and trees. The first park ever built on an
elevated line, it has been a huge success, attracting many more visitors
than expected and spurring the construction of apartment and commercial
buildings in the surrounding area.

Although the concept of the High Line as a landscaped pedestrian walkway
was inspired by its French predecessor, the design is shaping up to be
something different altogether — unlike any other park and unique to New
York.

"People are looking for a design that refers to the special qualities that
are up there now," said David. The goal is to capture the disused
track’s wildness, its grittiness, its evocation of the city’s industrial
past, and especially its sense of serenity. Yet the park will need to
accommodate large numbers of people, a variety of public uses, and the
commercial activities that will inevitably arise in the adjacent
spaces.

After narrowing down 70 proposals to four finalists, a selection committee
representing five city agencies and Friends of the High named a design
team led by the landscape architecture firm Field Operations and
architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro to create the master plan.

The team’s provocative preliminary concept looks more like a work of
modern sculpture than a traditional park. It is based on parallel
concrete planks that fade in and out of a landscape ranging from gravel
and grasses to a more cultivated type of garden. In some sections, the
volunteer vegetation and rusting metal of the existing line would remain
intact. The architects envision the line as a slow, meandering path that
at times dips below or curves above the tracks, with places for both
quiet reflection and public activities and events.

In October, more than a hundred people came to a community input forum to
view a presentation of the preliminary concept and offer their ideas,
concerns, and hopes.

Most of those attending agreed that the park should be a "slow lane," a
place to meander, meditate, and enjoy the views. They noted that there
is already a well-used route for bicyclists and skaters just a few
blocks away at the Hudson River Park. Other community concerns were
safety, enough seating, connections to the river, and guarding against
the encroachment of commercial activities. The design team will return
to the community with an update on December 2, at the Chelsea Recreation
Center.

Open Space As A Catalyst For Change

Unlike the typical development approach that throws in a park or two as a
sweetener to make large new construction projects more palatable to the
public, the effort to reuse the High Line starts with the premise that
open space can be at the heart of neighborhood revitalization.

And in contrast to the city’s top-down plan to build a stadium and
redevelop the area just to the north, which has generated tremendous
neighborhood opposition, the High Line project is a model of local
planning. It began at the grassroots and included the input of local
residents and businesses as it evolved. According to Joshua David, there
has been a remarkable and productive collaboration among Friends of the
High Line and numerous city agencies, including parks, city planning,
transportation, and economic development.

The Department of City Planning has put together a proposal that weaves
the High Line into a larger plan for rezoning West Chelsea. The plan
aims to encourage the construction of more housing in the area, yet
retain the area’s manufacturing and protect the thriving art gallery
district that has emerged between 10th and 11th Avenues.

To keep light and air around the High Line, the plan would restrict the
heights of adjacent buildings, while allowing their owners to sell
development rights that could be used in other parts of the district. It
also offers incentives for providing access to the line. The public
review process for the zoning change is expected to begin in December.

Developers are starting to take interest in the area, as planners had
hoped. But along with new development comes the risk of increased
commercialization. The challenge going ahead is to make the High Line a
true public space – not just a mall in the sky – that captures the
excitement of the original vision.

Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues.
Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal
for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and
an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.